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2010 Voter Packet Available

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Aussiecon 4 has announced the availability of the 2010 Hugo Award Voter Packet. The Packet, available to all registered Hugo Award voters, contains electronic copies of sample work in most of the award categories. In particular, for the first time ever the 2010 packet contains complete copies of all works in the four written fiction categories. The material is mostly in PDF format. A full list of the contents is available in Aussiecon 4’s press release.

If you are already an Aussiecon 4 member then an email explaining how to obtain your copy of the Packet will be on its way to you soon.

If you are not yet a member of Aussiecon 4, all you need in order to access the Packet is a Supporting Membership. The prices are as follows: AU$70, US$50, CA$50, £25, €35, ¥4,900, NZ$90. You can buy memberships online here. A supporting membership of Aussiecon 4 will give you the right to vote in the final ballot of the 2010 Hugo Awards, and nominate in the 2011 Hugo Awards. The deadline for voting in this year’s final ballot is 31 July 2010 23:59 PDT. You’ll want to sign up well before then because there’s a lot of reading material in that Packet.

Hugo Voter Packet Expands

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Anticipation has added additional material to the Hugo Voter Packet, which includes many of this year’s nominated works. The expanded package is a replacement for the previously announced package, so members of Anticipation can return to the 2009 Hugo page at their web site and download a new package, even if they previously have downloaded an earlier packet, using their membership number and password to access the packet.

John Scalzi has the list of newly-added material on his web site.

You must be a supporting or attending member of Anticipation to download the Hugo Voter Packet. If you are not a member, you can register online at their web site.

Free e-Books for Hugo Voters

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Each year we try to make sure that people who will be voting in the Hugo Awards (and John W Campbell Award for Best New Writer) have every opportunity to see and read the nominated works. This year, thanks to the heroic efforts of John Scalzi, we are able to offer a package that includes six complete novels, over two dozen pieces of short fiction (many of them novellas), three complete non-fiction books, and several other pieces of writing and art. All of this is available for free in electronic form, if you are eligible to vote in this year’s Hugo Awards. Some of the material is already free online to the general public, but many of the complete books are available only through this offer.

To become a voter you need at least a Supporting Membership in this year’s World Science Fiction Convention (Anticipation, to be held in Montreal in August). You do not need to attend the convention in order to vote. The costs of a Supporting Membership are: CA$55, US$50, £30, €35, ¥6000 or AU$55. You can buy one online at the Anticipation web site. Once your payment has been processed you will be sent email explaining how to download your voter package.

The material comes in a variety of formats, depending on how it was supplied to us, but it should all be readable using free software.

Please note that not every nominee is included in the package. Some publishers, authors, editors and artists have declined to participate. Also in the case of the John W Campbell Award, which is for new writers, not every nominee has a published novel, so they were unable to supply whole books.

Our thanks to John Scalzi for his efforts in organizing this, to all of the writers, artists, editors and publishers who have contributed their work, and to the Anticipation web team for proving the download service.

More information is available from John Scalzi, and the Anticipation web site.

Free Hugo-Nominated eBooks

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A number of publishers have teamed up to offer free electronic copies of this year’s Best Novel nominees to Hugo Awards voters. The books involved are Brasyl by Ian McDonald, Rollback by Robert Sawyer and The Last Colony by John Scalzi. US residents will also get Halting State by Charles Stross. The ebooks do not contain any digital rights management software and come as RTF files.

To get your free books, all you need to do is buy at least a ($50) supporting membership in this year’s World Science Fiction Convention, Denvention 3 (buy online here). That will give you the right to vote in the Hugo Awards and qualify you for the free book offer. Then you need to write to John Scalzi, who is coordinating the ebook giveaway. Details here.

The fifth nominee for Best Novel, Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, is not included in the giveaway, but an excerpt is available on the HarperCollins web site.

Many of the short fiction nominees are also available free online. Check out links here.